“At ten-thirty, Thursday,” said he.

“Ten-thirty, sharp.”

“Thank you.  I’ll have my bid in.”

His muscles ached and his knees were trembling even before he had reached the street.  When he tried to board a ’bus he was waved away, so he called a cab, piled his blueprints inside of it, and then clambered in on top of them.  He realized that he was badly frightened.

To this day the sight of a blueprint gives Louis Mitchell a peculiar nausea and a fluttering sensation about the heart.  At three o’clock the next morning he felt his way blindly to his bed and toppled upon it, falling straightway into a slumber during which he passed through monotonous, maddening wastes of blue and white, over which ran serpentine rows of figures.

He was up with the dawn and at his desk again, but by four that afternoon he was too dazed, too exhausted to continue.  His eyes were playing him tricks, the room was whirling, his hand was shaking until his fingers staggered drunkenly across the sheets of paper.  Ground plans, substructures, superstructures, were jumbled into a frightful tangle.  He wanted to yell.  Instead he flung the drawings about the room, stamped savagely upon them, then rushed down-stairs and devoured a table d’hote dinner.  He washed the meal down with a bottle of red wine, smoked a long cigar, then undressed and went to bed amid the scattered blueprints.  He slept like a dead man.

He arose at sun-up, clear-headed, calm.  All day he worked like a machine, increasing his speed as the hours flew.  He took good care to eat and drink, and, above all, to smoke at regular intervals, but he did not leave his room.  By dark he had much of the task behind him; by midnight he began to have hope; toward dawn he saw the end; and when daylight came he collapsed.

He had deciphered the tank and superstructure plans on forty-five sets of blueprints, had formulated a proposition, exclusive of substructure work, basing a price per pound on the American market then ruling, f.o.b. tidewater, New York.  He had the proposition in his pocket when he tapped on the ground-glass door of Mr. Peebleby’s office at ten-twenty-nine Thursday morning.

The Director General of the great Robinson-Ray Syndicate was genuinely surprised to learn that the young American had completed a bid in so short a time, then requested him, somewhat absent-mindedly, to leave it on his desk where he could look it over at his leisure.

“Just a moment,” said his caller.  “I’m going to sit down and talk to you again.  How long have you been using cyanide tanks, Mr. Peebleby?”

“Ever since they were adopted.”  Mr. Peebleby was visibly annoyed at this interruption to his morning’s work.

“Well, I can give you a lot of information about them.”

The Director General raised his brows haughtily.  “Ah!  Suggestions, amendments, improvements, no doubt.”

“Exactly.”